This report is cross-posted from Maggie's Notebook, one of my blogging colleagues. It concerns the incident where New Black Panther Party thugs showed up at a Philadelphia polling place to intimidate folks they didn't like (white voters). It also concerns the decision by the Eric Holder Justice Department not to pursue legal action.
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"Philadelphia voters just lost their voter's rights. The Black Panthers have won. Voter Fraud won. The people of Philadelphia - that City of Brotherly Love, those coveted Voter Rights - lost. If you think this only matters in Philadelphia, think again. Armed thugs standing outside your poll precinct is coming to a polling place near you.
The home of the liberty bell and Ben Franklin just had the long-arm of Obama Law reach out and smack hard the city and it's voters. Barack Obama's justice department has decided it is okay to have members of the New Black Panther party deciding who does what inside and outside a polling precinct.
DOJ attorneys were told to stand-down and dismiss the case:
The civil suit filed Jan. 7 identified the three men as members of the Panthers and said they wore military-style uniforms, black berets, combat boots, battle-dress pants, black jackets with military-style insignias and were armed with "a dangerous weapon"and used racial slurs and insults to scare would-be voters and those there to assist them at the Philadelphia polling location on Nov. 4.
The complaint said the three men engaged in "coercion, threats and intimidation, ... racial threats and insults, ... menacing and intimidating gestures, ... and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote." It said that unless prohibited by court sanctions, they would "continued to violate ... the Voting Rights Act by continuing to direct intimidation, threats and coercion at voters and potential voters, by again deploying uniformed and armed members at the entrance to polling locations in future elections, both in Philadelphia and throughout the country."
To support its evidence, the government had secured an affidavit from Bartle Bull, a longtime civil rights activist and former aide to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Mr. Bull said in a sworn statement dated April 7 that he was serving in November as a credentialed poll watcher in Philadelphia when he saw the three uniformed Panthers confront and intimidate voters with a nightstick.
Inexplicably, the government did not enter the affidavit in the court case, according to the files.
"In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll," he declared. "In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi ... I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location."
The defendants, New Black Chairman Malik zulu Shabazz, Minister King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson - for five months REFUSED TO APEAR IN COURT. What would happen to you or me if we so blatantly flipped off the Federal court? As late as May 5th, the DOJ considered "judgments or sanctions" against the three men because of their failure to appear in court.
But 10 days later, the department reversed itself and filed a notice of voluntary dismissal from the complaint for Malik Zulu Shabazz and Mr. Jackson.
Malik Zulu Shabazz is a Howard University Law School grad and a resident of Washington, D.C. Jerry Jackson is a credentialed to be at a the polling place as he is a 14th Ward Democratic Committee member.
According to the complaint, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a Howard University Law School graduate, said the placement of King Samir Shabazz and Mr. Jackson in Philadelphia was part of a nationwide effort to deploy New Black Panther Party members at polling locations on Election Day.
Ironically, The Voters Rights Act under Section 5, said that jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect.
This is part of the "change" Obama promised us, I guess. The Attorney General has sanctioned the change and decided that we will pay a poll tax in the form of voter intimidation. The Black Panthers tending your polling place, wielding weapons and trash talking - perhaps about your ethnicity, the color of you skin and your choice of candidate, is okay by Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. It's payback time.
There is an interesting editorial at The Washington Times. You can read it here.
The first video shows the Black Panthers telling a reporter at a Philadelphia poll that he is "security." As you listen to the second Black Panther speak, remember the testimony of Bartle Bull above.
Shades of Bill Clinton: One Black Panther says there are "no night sticks" at the polls. When the reporter says, but yes, there was a man with a night stick here, the Black Panther says "I don't care about what was. I care about what is."
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Fousesquawk comment:
Well done, Maggie. One can only wonder what true civil rights figures, dead or alive, must think about this incident. Is this what Martin Luther King marched and died for? I don't think so.
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